Archive for October, 2017

Philadelphia, PA – On September 14th at 8pm, Cai Guo-Qiang’s largest public art project in the United States in the past decade opened on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. In a one-time twenty minute performance directed by Cai Guo-Qiang, local participants steered 27 pedicabs adorned with nearly 1,000 multi colored lanterns of various shapes, hand-crafted in the artist’s hometown of Quanzhou. For this occasion, Cai designed a choreography based on the flowing and languorous movements of the lanterns. The “fireflies” followed the variations of a musical composition into the gathering darkness of the Parkway as though spinning and dancing into a late summer carnivalesque dream. At the conclusion of the performance, a crowd of over 1,000 spectators flooded the Parkway to congratulate the drivers and take selfies with their favorite lanterns. Fireflies is a humorous tribute to the centennial of the artery. As the city’s cultural axis with profound political meaning; it brings participants and spectators to reflect on the relationship between public art, and the city, its people and society.
“mesmerizing…the event lasted only 20 minutes but generated a feel-good response.” — The New York Times

“it was just so charming and it made you laugh,” said Lauren Raske, 31, an event planner

“It’s a nighttime activity and the mystique of the evening makes it a little romantic,” said Nicole Dugan, a physical therapist, “Even on this small scale, it was really spectacular.”

“This is not just from Cai’s childhood but from everyone’s childhood,” – Sadigaa Horton, 45, pedicab driver

The opening night preludes a month’s duration of the public component of Fireflies: commencing September 15th, members of the public are invited to board the vehicles to take rides up and down the Parkway from Sister Cities Park to Iroquois Park near the Philadelphia Museum Art. The rides will be operated for four weeks, Thursdays through Sundays, between 6-10pm, until October 8, 2017. As of September 15th, all the advance time slots have been reserved, but walk-ins remain available. Fireflies is commissioned and organized by Association for Public Art with curator Lance Fung of San Francisco’s Fung Collaboratives.

Spectators with Fireflies after the opening performance, Philadelphia, 2017. Photos by Jeff Fusco Photography, courtesy Association for Public Art Middle Left：Photo by Meredith Edlow, courtesy Association for Public Art

Cai Guo-Qiang has an unforgettable relationship with the city of Philadelphia—his explosion event Fallen Blossom in 2009 was seen in front of the façade of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, located at the end of the iconic Benjamin Franklin Parkway– in homage of the late director Anne d’Harnoncourt. Fireflies was an entirely new and grassroots experience. Responding to an open call, several Philadelphians partook in the performance and project as pedicab operators, while visitors from the city and around the world witnessed the performance and rode the pedicabs. Lanterns in the shapes of cars, submarines, cosmic ships, slippers, sushi, donuts as well as little roosters, extraterrestrials, and emoticons were fabricated in Quanzhou before being shipped thousands of miles away to be installed in Philadelphia. Shuttling back and forth on the Parkway aligned with flags from hundreds of different countries, the fireflies remind people of the countless cultures and peoples that take root in the Unites States. Over the next four weeks, the pedicabs will generate encounters between peoples of various backgrounds.

This summer, Cai Guo-Qiang spent several days in Philadelphia in preparation for the opening performance. During the dress rehearsal, a long procession of “fireflies,” generating a trail of bright light, was escorted by the police from the production headquarters in Olde Kensignton, through Ludlow and Poplar to Center City all the way to the Parkway. The neighborhoods became alive with the passing of the fireflies; city dwellers and local residents spontaneously stopped to cheer and take photographs, enjoying the excitement of a chance encounter with public art…

“Small roosters and red stars…a lot of the lanterns you see here resemble those I used to play with as a kid in Quanzhou,” said Cai Guo-Qiang, “they are the inextinguishable fireworks of my childhood…For the centennial of the Benjamin Franklin parkway, I didn’t wish to create a large scale celebration, but rather a playful and light evening, to return the Parkway to the people and let them participate in the creative process.”

The musical composition for Firelfies was edited by Liu Ruomu, an undergraduate student at Emery College, from the original official state song “Pennsylvania” by Eddie Khoury and Ronnie Bonner. A 9-minute documentary sharing the same title was directed by Shanshan Xia.

Moscow – The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts announces the long-anticipated opening of renowned international artist Cai Guo-Qiang’s first solo exhibition in Russia: October. On the occasion of the October Revolution’s centenary, Cai specifically created for the Pushkin Museum a series of bold new works that reflect on the role of individuals in history and the relationship between individual dreams and collective ideals. The exhibition will be held with the support of Sberbank and will be on view in the main building of the museum from September 13 to November 12, 2017, as a crucial component of the “Pushkin XXI” project.

During the past two weeks prior to the exhibition’s opening, local passers-by often gathered outside the Museum to photograph the installation Autumn. Their posts on social media stirred curious discussions about the classical architecture’s transformation. A 16m-high mountain constructed out of hundreds of stacked baby cradles, cribs and strollers gradually rose at the entrance of the centuries-old museum, engulfing the front steps and colonnade. Then over three days, a crane planted one to two white birch trees of 3-4m in each cradle and birch saplings in each stroller. The larger trees shelter the small, forming a verdurous birch forest. During the installation process, this forest has already begun to yellow from the oncoming autumn. Over the course of the exhibition, the fallen leaves will blanket the mountainside, revealing the white trunks of the birches and the Constructivist-like structure of the mountain itself.

Literally obstructing the museum entrance, the dominating Autumn marks the beginning of an entirely original visual experience. Inside, the artist continues to manipulate the museum’s space. Hovering over the central staircase is The Sound,a 20m-long piece of silk scorched with gunpowder calligraphy that divides the lofty space in half. The two-dimensional art of calligraphy and painting is transformed into a poetic, spatial installation work filled with momentum. As viewers ascend the staircase, hovering overhead on the smooth white silk is a cautionary lyric from The Internationale: “There are no supreme saviors: neither God, nor tsar, nor hero!” By the time the words seem within reach, the visitor will have entered the White Room.

The ceiling is covered by a silver mirror, multiplying the already expansive space. Two 20m-long gunpowder paintings on the facing walls, River and Garden, surrounds the field of Landin the center of the room. With this installation, created from nearly three million stalks of golden reed, Cai hopes to recreate the sense of mystery found in the Soviet films and Russian paintings of his childhood — the sunlight filtering through the clouds and shining on the wheat field, and likewise projecting into an adolescent mind the romantic ideas with regard to the freedom and beauty of life. Only through the reflection in the mirror overhead can viewers discern the symbols hidden within the crop circle. Simultaneously reflected are the countless images of civilians embedded within the black-and-white Riverof turbulent history, the colorful poppies, carnations, and Soviet posters found in the fantastical Garden, as well as the viewers themselves.

This inverse illusion leads viewers to reflect on their own relationships with the works.

As the orchestral arrangement of Tchaikovsky sounds, daytime fireworks launch from Red Square and the Moskva riverbank, painting one image after another in the sky, each filled with somber sensibility. The performance concludes with one hundred seconds of earthshattering, thunderous explosions, leaving behind a blinding white flash……October: Daytime Fireworks on Red Square.The exhibition reaches its climax with the video projection.
Beginning on September 4, Cai worked with local volunteers on-site at VDNKh No.22 to ignite the gunpowder works River, The Sound and Garden. The volunteers laid out a river of history with one hundred photographs depicting the lives of ordinary people; they taught Cai to write Russian calligraphy, and etched out enormous stencils of flowers. After Cai ignited each work, they rushed in to extinguish the sparks remaining on canvas. Together with the artist, they experienced the moments of suspense prior to each explosion and witnessed the birth of each work.

A bilingual catalogue in English and Russian will be available at the end of September. In addition to numerous images detailing the process and outcome of the exhibition, the catalogue will also include Cai’s stirring personal essay “A Boy’s October” and scholarly contributions by Alexandra Danilova, Alexander Etkins, Boris Groys, Lars Nittve. The catalogue integrates personal, historical, artistic and political perspectives, echoing and responding to the themes and questions raised by the exhibition.

This November, the exhibition will unveil a documentary film of the same name, directed by Shanshan Xia. The film not only details the many stories behind the making of the exhibition, but also presents Cai’s search of the Russian painter Konstantin Maksimov. It hopes, through the narrative of these two artists, to candidly address the vacillation and persistence of artists during changing times.